Electric motors are driven by supplying electricity to the motor windings. This results in the heating of the windings and associated motor structure due to losses in driving the motor. While motors are designed to operate at an elevated temperature, conventionally, motors are cooled responsive the motor windings reaching a predetermined temperature. For hermetic and semi-hermetic refrigerant compressors, cooling is achieved by causing refrigerant gas or liquid to flow through/over the motor structure before being supplied to the compressor with the suction or mid-stage pressure gas. Since the motor efficiency and equipment size requirements dictate limited flow path availability, the amount of cooling flow is somewhat limited. The motor structure, however, represents such a large thermal mass that the result is that there can be a significant time period before the motor cooling flow achieves the desired cooling effect to return the motor temperature to the desired level. During this time period the windings can experience a large deviation from the desired operating temperature.